ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the development of pragmatic competence of Chinese as a foreign language learners and to reveal the factors that elucidate the compliment responding (CR) patterns. Compliment responses (CRs) are among the most studied speech acts in pragmatics. The CR studies have largely used speech acts as an effective approach to mirror "speakers' reaction to external appraisals of their personal and social identity". The early studies on Chinese CRs generally come to an agreement that the CR strategies of native Chinese speakers reflect the cultural norm of Chinese society, modesty. One of the eminent differences among the studies is that the established Chinese CR strategies were presented according to different taxonomies. The majority of the studies on Chinese CR strategies examined the four conversational topics or situational settings, appearance, possession, ability, and character following Chen's study which is based on Holmes's findings obtained from a New Zealand English corpus.
